Despite coming from Wales, I dropped Welsh for Latin at my comprehensive school, so I know what Artes Mundi means. But I am all at sea watching a video in Arabic that has Welsh subtitles. Or rather I should be, but I am actually not: I am absorbed. A youth is punting a boat through the reeds in a sunbaked marshy estuary. As he speaks, the subtitles describe him as “bachgen” and I do know what that means: “boy”. It takes me back to when I was a bachgen.
Artes Mundi plunges you into a polyglot assembly of artists from all over the world dealing with problems and projects apparently remote from local Welsh concerns. The results are curious and wonderful: a Kurdish church in ruins, a beach in Bougainville, Lebanese portraits – and languages as diverse as the settings. Then again, are the world’s concerns really so remote from Welsh port cities and seaside towns? “This land is a poem of river healing,” says a poster-style artwork by Carolina Caycedo plastered across the front of Chapter Arts in Cardiff. The words are printed over a maplike painting of a landscape of green hills and blue water. This flowing land could be in Mexico or Brazil or Wales itself.
